US funding for global internet freedom 'effectively gutted'

And the damage keeps hitting!!

Guardian: Internet Freedom Funding Gutted

— Christopher Terry (@christopherterry.bsky.social) 2026-02-20T13:47:45.546Z

US funding for global internet freedom ‘effectively gutted’

Programme that funds groups building tech to evade oppressive government controls under serious threat

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/19/us-funding-for-global-internet-freedom-effectively-gutted?CMP=share_btn_url
Aisha Down Thu 19 Feb 2026 00.00 EST


For nearly two decades, the US quietly funded a global effort to keep the internet from splintering into fiefdoms run by authoritarian governments. Now that money is seriously threatened and a large part of it is already gone, putting into jeopardy internet freedoms around the world.

Managed by the US state department and the US Agency for Global Media, the programme – broadly called Internet Freedom – funds small groups all over the world, from Iran to China to the Philippines, who built grassroots technologies to evade internet controls imposed by governments. It has dispensed well over $500m (£370m) in the past decade, according to an analysis by the Guardian, including $94m in 2024.

Then came Doge, Donald Trump’s department of government efficiency, tasked with reducing the size of US government agencies and initiatives. Career employees who staffed Internet Freedom resigned or were sacked in 2025 as part of larger reductions. Many of its programmes were cut permanently; its main granting office issued no money in 2025. The Open Technology Fund (OTF), a nonprofit that works with the government to direct roughly half of this money, won a lawsuit to get some of this funding restored in December; the Trump administration is now appealing against that ruling.

.Meanwhile, the Trump administration this January withdrew from the Freedom Online Coalition, a global alliance set up by the US to defend digital rights................